


Breath

by Scribe



Series: Glamour 'verse [2]
Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 20:12:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's wrong, that Fraser's the one who's dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breath

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the same universe as "Glamour", again written flashfic style for a ds_c6d_snippets prompt that got away from me.
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings: not technically major character death, but if the summary makes you wary, well, be wary.

It's wrong, that Fraser's the one who's dead. It's supposed to be Ray who does stupid things and Fraser who saves him, saves them, with all his never-ending knowledge about ice crevasses and hypothermia and the ten million other things that can kill you up here. If Ray had gone down Fraser would have known what to do, would have done something faster than the eternity it took Ray to melt through the ice with sheer force of will and pull him out.

Ray is doing CPR. 

There isn't any goddamn point- Fraser had been down there way too long, and even on dry land he's been maybe ten, twelve minutes without breath or heartbeat already- but there isn't anything else to do. Ray's no Healer. He can do a little on-the-job first aid, sure, clean and close a cut or numb someone's pain for a while, but this is out of his league. He doesn't have a clue how to get to Fraser's life force, or whatever's left of it.

He looses track of how long he's been doing this. His arms and shoulders feel like lead and his knees ache from the ice and he's bruising the top of his right hand with the heel of his left where he's holding them clenched together, and it just goes on and on. Fraser's sodden clothes have frozen everywhere except his chest, where Ray's bare hands are giving off heat that he doesn't even intend; he's always been better with will-magic than with spells, but that means it sometimes kicks in involuntarily when he just wants something bad enough. Fraser's warned him a million times about not wasting his energy creating heat in the arctic, but fuck that, he won't last long enough by himself for it to matter anyway.

It isn't helping. The compressions are getting harder, though that could be just because his arms are tired, or maybe rigor mortis setting in, or maybe Fraser's body is just freezing through. You're supposed to call for help before you start CPR. It's only a stopgap, something to get the person through a couple of minutes until the ambulance arrives. It's just him and Fraser and the dogs out here, though, Dief whining in the traces of the sled and the rest of them quiet. Ray imagines looking down at them all from above, imagines loosing the speck of himself in an entire world of white. No one is coming to take over or to pull him away. He doesn't know what happens next.

"You can't do that forever, son," someone says.

Ray feels a chill. He's been cold all over for weeks, of course, ever since Fraser made him stop using warming charms, but this is different. This is death-chill. It feels like someone left a door open somewhere in his soul and there's a draft. 

"Sooner or later your arms are going to give out, for one," continues the voice. "And for another, it's not accomplishing anything."

Ray ignores him, concentrating on tilting Fraser's head back so the air goes into his lungs and not his stomach. He was terrible at remembering to do that in training. He goes through the steps in his head for the millionth time: pinch Fraser's nose shut, tilt his head, make a seal with his lips, breathe. Repeat.

He's never actually heard Bob Fraser speak before, but he's used to the feeling of his presence, to catching strange smudges of shadow out of the corner of his eye or murmured words just below his hearing. There are a hundred charms Fraser could pick up for a buck that would keep the guy at bay, but he won't hear of it, no matter how hard Ray tries to convince him that it would be for the best. Ray wears Vecchio's, not that it's ever done much of anything; Bob is haunting Fraser, after all, not him. He's still wearing it, actually. He'd offered to give it back after the business with Muldoon, but Vecchio has another one now, heavy-duty and invisible to boot, FBI issue. It makes the one Ray has around his neck look like a grade school craft project.

"Oh, have some manners, at least," says Bob. "Don't just sit there and ignore me."

Ray starts counting his compressions out loud instead of answering. Bob huffs. Ray can see his boots in the snow on the other side of Fraser's chest now, though he doesn't look up, doesn’t stop. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, breathe.

"And I thought Benton never listened," says Bob. "You've got to give up, he isn't dead."

"No he isn't," snaps Ray in the second between breaths and compressions, and then stops, elbows locked. "Wait, what?"

"He isn't dead," repeats Bob. "He will be soon, though, if you don't stop that and get on with it."

"What? Get on with what?" Ray shakes his head. He aches all over now that he's stopped moving, and it feels like he's trying to think through fog. "How come I can see you, anyway?"

"Oh, proximity to the other side, I'd expect," says Bob, nudging Fraser with a toe that passes through his torso. "Death makes a gateway and all that." 

"I thought you said he wasn't dead!"

"Yes, I did, just now," says Bob. "Don't you remember? You aren't hypothermic, are you? You don't look so well."

"Shut _up_!" Ray yells, voice cracking. He finds himself choking back tears with no warning at all. "Just tell me what to _do_."

"Give him his air, of course," says Bob. 

"I've been doing that!"

"No, you've been giving him your air. He's long past being able to use that, though, I don't know what good you thought it would do. You've got to give him his."

"What?"

"His air. You've got some of it, don't you?"

"You mean from that time on the ship? The buddy breathing thing?" Ray asks, bewildered.

"No, no, the air you owe him, that you never paid up. Are you sure you don't have some kind of memory condition?"

"You mean from the _poker game_?" 

"Ah, yes, that was it. A foolish thing to bet, I thought, but I suppose it's come in handy."

Ray stares at him and then at Fraser's lifeless body, willing it all to make some kind of sense. He still feels like he's trying to think through a fog. Maybe he is hypothermic after all, or maybe he spent too much energy melting the ice, or maybe he's in shock.

"I don't understand," he says finally. 

"City-taught, I suppose," says Bob, shaking his head. "You owe him air, right? So that air is his, he has the right to breathe it. Technically speaking he hasn't really died until he's gotten the chance to at least try breathing all of his breaths, but you haven't paid up yet so he hasn't had a shot at that air. Ergo, not dead."

"Okay," says Ray slowly.

"Mind you, it won't last too much longer. Pretty soon he'll be close enough to this side that he won't remember how breathing works, no matter how much air you give him."

Ray goes cold again, but this time it isn't the presence of death, just regular old sheer terror.

"And you didn't think to mention that? No, forget it, just tell me how to give it to him."

"How should I know? You're the magician."

Right, okay. He can do this. He's used to will-magic, and there's nothing he in the world he wants more than for Fraser to breathe. He leans down like he's doing rescue breaths again, makes a seal over Fraser's freezing lips and thinks _not my air, the air I owe him, Fraser's air, Fraser's air_.

"It won't do you much good if he wakes up like this," remarks Bob, right at the last second. Ray manages to pull back, coughing a little at the liquid burn of the magic receding. It's a good point. If Fraser only has as much air as Ray owes him before he has to start breathing on his own again- how much is one hundred and fifty of air, anyway? One hundred and fifty breaths? One hundred and fifty seconds? No more than a couple minutes, surely- he's got to be somewhere warm and dry and safe if he has a hope of surviving. 

"Okay," says Ray, looking around in a panic. There's the sled with all their gear on it, overturned, the dogs starting to fret now. "Okay, okay. Wait. Just hang on a minute. All right, Fraser? Hang on."

He uses too much magic setting up camp. There are things people can do sometimes when there are no other options, like the stories of mothers lifting cars off their children, except what he's using when he gets past the limits of his strength is his own life force. It doesn't matter. He gets the tent up, frozen ground parting for the stakes like potting soil when he needs it to, lights the camping stove with a glance, floats Fraser a foot in the air to drag his frozen clothes off. What else are you supposed to do for people who are frozen within an inch of their life? Fraser must have gone over it a million times, but something that's either magic or impending unconsciousness is sparking in the edge of Ray's vision now, making it hard to concentrate.

"Did I miss anything?" he asks, pulling his own layers off. He lets Dief into the tent too; the more warmth the better, right?

"Nothing comes to mind," says Bob from outside. He sounds as calm as he has throughout the whole ordeal. Maybe the dead don't really get upset.

"Okay," says Ray. He wraps himself around Fraser and the blankets around himself, leans over, and lets the last of his magic rise.

 

Fraser doesn't gasp or choke or jerk upright like people do in movies when they come back to life. He doesn't do anything, really, but his chest starts to move against Ray's, a slow up and down. Ray is the one who gasps. He hadn't realized that the air he owed Fraser was _his_ air, minutes and seconds he was meant to see and now never will, time that he can feel being ripped from the span of his life.

Whatever. He was probably going to spend it doing something stupid, anyway. 

"Any luck?" calls Bob. Ray isn't sure why he doesn't just appear inside the tent, but he doesn't care enough to ask. 

"For now, at least," he calls back, and then adds, "hey, thanks. I know you could have had him with you if you'd kept your mouth shut."

"Oh, he'd only be angry with me for leaving you stranded. You know how he gets when he's in a snit, there's no talking to him. That would be an unpleasant way to spend an eternity."

His voice fades out, maybe because he's leaving or maybe just because Ray's grip on reality is starting to get kind of wobbly. It's going to take him a week to sleep this off. He rests his head on Fraser's collarbone so he can feel each breath, trying to keep himself together enough that the heat he's pouring from his entire body doesn't actually burn Fraser or set the blankets on fire. 

Ray closes his eyes and counts. One hundred and fifty of air, breaths that Fraser won fair and square and that Ray kept safe for him without even knowing he was doing it. The clock's already started, and he still isn't sure what one-fifty of air means, but he counts anyway.

At one hundred and seventy-eight Fraser starts to shiver.


End file.
